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| THE COURT OF CHIVALRY |  |
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The Court in the 17th Century
A new Court?
Guide to Users
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The High Court of Chivalry
in the early seventeenth century Once the court was established on a regular basis in 1634 the volume of business multiplied rapidly. By 1637/8, when cases were running at over seventy per sitting, there were signs that the amount of work was becoming too much for the court to cope with. Plaintiffs were having to queue up to be assigned court days, witnesses were kept waiting in London for weeks on end and Dr Duck was pleading pressure of business as a reason for delaying hearings. The civil lawyers enjoyed a bonanza in terms of new business. There is, however, no indication of potential litigants being put off, and even after adverse publicity in the Short Parliament large numbers of new actions were still being started. Knowledge of the court’s existence and procedures spread far and wide. The counties where cases originated were spread relatively evenly across England and Wales. London and Middlesex were well out in front, as one might expect given the advantage of geographical proximity, but the other leading providers of plaintiffs were the more far-flung counties of Devon, Cornwall and Yorkshire. Distance and difficulty of communication do not appear to have been any hindrance to the court’s activities. Up and down the country potential litigants knew of its existence and understood the forms of redress that it could offer. Knowledge of the rules of the game was not confined to the gentry. When Thomas Cooke, a mercer, was beaten up by Nicholas Wadham and his servant in a tavern in Liskeard, Cornwall, he very self consciously refrained from retaliation, saying to Wadham ‘I knowe you are a gentleman, therefore I will not replie, because you shall not take advantage against me in my Lord Marshall’s court.’ Some litigants appear to have acquired a considerable appetite for suits in the court. Ralph Pudsey, a quarrelsome North Riding attorney, brought four, as well as acting as legal adviser or commissioner in at least three other cases. One of the reasons for the court’s appeal was the high probability that plaintiffs would secure a favourable verdict. This is evident from those cases where we have a record of the final sentence. Of the 126 cases where the outcome is known 94 (73.8%) resulted in conviction, 19 (15%) were settled by arbitration and only 14 (11.1%) resulted in acquittal. For the most part comparable data does not exist for other courts of the period; so it is to hard to know how conviction rates compare with these. But a situation where virtually three quarters of all cases were won by the plaintiff does indicate a set of procedures heavily stacked in his favour. This is confirmed by the detailed record. In practice, if a case ran to its full term it was extremely difficult for a defendant to secure an acquittal, particularly where he was a plebeian. It tended to happen only when a plaintiff failed to pursue a case, or was unable to produce witnesses to support his libel, or where local officers were attempting to carry out their duties in the face of extreme provocation by a gentleman. The case of Filioll v Haskett demonstrates the level of abuse required for a gentleman to lose a case. Here Haskett secured acquittal only after an array of witnesses, including the local tythingman, testified that he was a respectable yeoman, who had been subjected to a sadistic beating by Fillioll and his servant, about which they boasted openly afterwards. Almost uniqely Fillioll was required to answer to the court for false clamour and molestation of Haskett. The norm was for gentlemen to be able to subject plebeians to vicious assaults at the slightest hint of disrespect and still secure convictions. The extent to which the odds favoured the plaintiff is also reflected in the frequency with which defendants promoted counter suits where they were qualified to do so. Sometimes the court would decide between them and award the case to one party or the other; but there were also examples where it maintained its even handedness by awarding sentence to the plaintiff in both actions, notably in Pincombe v Prust, where two ageing Devon lawyers traded insults and insisted on pursuing their actions to the bitter end, in spite of efforts at arbitration. The considerable advantage enjoyed by the plaintiff in the Court of Chivalry was one of the things which made it attractive to litigants. There were others. Levack makes the point that there was a need within the legal system for civil law courts which could decide cases relatively quickly, based on summary process and written testimony, rather than having to rely on the cumbersome trial by jury. This was what made the Admiralty Court popular with its litigants, who were by and large merchants and traders needing quick decisions so that they could get back to business. Several of these considerations also applied to the Court of Chivalry. It offered a new form of relatively cheap and speedy redress before judges whose authority was unimpeachable. For a gentleman who had been insulted in a manner likely to provoke a duel the principal avenue for litigation prior to the 1630s was the Court of Star Chamber. But Star Chamber process was notoriously slow and expensive. T.G. Barnes has calculated that most cases took years to reach a resolution – with the preliminary proceedings lasting anything for eight to twenty one months, and then a further three months to two years before there was a final verdict. The average Court of Chivalry case, on the other hand, took just over a year from start to finish. The cost of Star Chamber suits is harder to calculate, but it appears that most plaintiffs could expect to pay several hundred pounds, whereas the mean costs in a Court of Chivalry case were £43, a sum which most plaintiffs could expect to recoup with a favourable verdict. Overall the experience of litigation in the Court of Chivalry compared favourably with the Court of Requests which was renowned for providing prompt and reasonably priced justice.
Proceed to: The collapse of the court
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Steve Rea & Richard Cust |
